It's actually hard to find mentors, when it comes to trying to gain useful skills

Leucosticte

Well-known member
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916
#1
Most mentors I've run into have been in some kind of dying trade, like computer repair, where they're so broke that they have to say, "We need you to work for free, but in exchange, we'll give you experience." If it's a thriving trade, they're too busy making money hand over fist to be establishing mentorship programs; in order to meet the demand, they will bring people on for on-the-job training at full pay, and they don't make a big deal about how they're training you, because in actuality, you're doing a lot of self-training since everyone is too busy to train you. There's a heavy reliance on talent rather than trainability; that's what they mean by being a self-starter. You pick stuff up without having to be taught it.

Anyway, I was asking someone recently why it is that there are people who have been speaking English for years and still make a lot of mistakes. He said that some people may just lack talent.

I sometimes wonder if I'm that way, with regard to French. Idk, I think the main problem is, it's hard to find people who are willing to put much more than a token effort into training others in French. To the extent people are perfectionists about it, their attitude is, "Just don't speak French unless you can do it perfectly." It doesn't take the form of trying to relentlessly correct them and explain the underlying rules and so on so they understand.

It's hard to find a combination of a reasonably talented and motivated student, and a competent and conscientious mentor. https://vintologi.com/threads/its-kind-of-hard-to-mentor-people.530/
 

Oxblood

Well-known member
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299
#2
It’s hard to find mentors because competence is always sold for a high price.

Free mentors are liars, incompetent, always. There is no other way around, if you want a competent tutor, you have to pay his price.
 

Leucosticte

Well-known member
Messages
916
#3
It’s hard to find mentors because competence is always sold for a high price.

Free mentors are liars, incompetent, always. There is no other way around, if you want a competent tutor, you have to pay his price.
I wonder how much French tutors charge these days? If it were $15/hour, than I could get 100 hours of tutoring for the same price as taking one college class in French, and it would probably be a better deal.

UPDATE: Oh, people say it's $20-50/hour.
 
Messages
10
#4
Can confirm the whole computer ordeal.

Other trades such as languages (even ones such as Japanese) also aren't in high demand due to its low value.
 

Leucosticte

Well-known member
Messages
916
#5
It’s hard to find mentors because competence is always sold for a high price.

Free mentors are liars, incompetent, always. There is no other way around, if you want a competent tutor, you have to pay his price.
I wonder if I can find some third worlder, like from Africa, who speaks French and has access to a computer? Hmm.
 
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